Bob Dylan’s legendary Fender Stratocaster guitar sells for $965,000

Bob Dylan’s controversial sunburst Fender Stratocaster, played at a festival marking the artist’s shift from folk to rock n’ roll, sold for $965,000 Friday in what auctioneer Christie’s said was the highest price ever paid for a guitar at auction.

The buyer wasn’t immediately identified.

The guitar symbolizes a turning point for Dylan, who walked onstage at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 and shocked his mostly folk fan base with a defining three-song electric set.

The guitar went missing for the next 47 years until PBS researchers discovered that a New Jersey woman whose father worked for Dylan’s manager had it in her home, according to Rolling Stone magazine,

“After one flight, my father saw there were three guitars left on the plane,” the woman told Rolling Stone. “He contacted the company a few times about picking the guitars up, but nobody ever got back to him.”

The final price easily topped the presale estimate of $300,000 to $500,000. Christie’s also was selling Dylan’s handwritten and typewritten lyrics, found inside the guitar case, for a presale estimate of $3,000 to $30,000.